


if that hole's got a heart

by skanktuary



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dirty Talk, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polymachina, Switching, creative use of polymorph, filth but make it heartwarming, friendfucking, hoe shit, polymachina is canon don't @ me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-23 23:39:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14343393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skanktuary/pseuds/skanktuary
Summary: everyone reallydidmiss scanlan. he can tell because they won’t stop trying to fuck him. trying, and succeeding.





	if that hole's got a heart

**Author's Note:**

> the first version of this was written in my phone’s notes app as ‘scanlan is sexy deal with it’. there’s not enough vox machina filth on the internet for my tastes at all. there’s not enough polymachina. and there’s sure as shit not enough of scanlan shorthalt being the littlest black dress. you’re fucking welcome, fellow gutter dwellers. i have never been less sorry.
> 
> shout-out to [infernal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernal/profile) for living in the sewer with me. her encouragement and interest made me actually write this rather than just being content to send her increasingly incredulous messages about how everyone should fuck the bard.
> 
>  _edit, 9/18_ : came back to fix a couple of errors. thank you so much for the comments and kudos - i hadn't posted fanfiction to the internet in over a decade when i got it in my mind that it was my personal duty to fix the dearth of garbage available. be pleased. [spoilers through episode 109]

_I seen a hole and I aim to fill it_

_If that hole's got a heart, I got the means to thrill it_

_If that hole's got a heart, I got the means to fill it_

_If that hole's got a heart_

 

_The Blow - What Tom Said About Girls_

  
  
  


 

Obviously, everything is still a little tense after Scanlan comes back. He has to fall back into the natural order of things and let himself be forgiven by people (or not) in their own time. After a battle together, a lot of wounds seem to be rapidly closing; after a few it starts to feel almost like before he left.  
  
Almost.  
  
Because he notices their attention now, in ways he didn't before. He’d theorized, in his time away, that it was possibly his own self-loathing that made him feel so inconsequential to them all. He’s starting to gather more and more evidence that makes it seem like it _was_ his own bullshit, before, keeping him from seeing them appreciating him, because he sees it all over now.  
  
He _feels_ the appreciation now, like a physical sensation, when he pulls out a clever bit of magic or a wild idea that just might work. _Scanlan's back_ , he keeps hearing in warm tones, in pleased ones, like something wrong has finally been set right; like he's a broken limb of theirs that's finally healed and is out of the cast, the threat of amputation passed.

 

The party has an extremely powerful caster in Keyleth and they are continually struck by the feats of magic she can manage. But even she can't casually dominate monsters, and Scanlan doesn't miss the flicker of interest in her eye when he pulls out something even she wouldn't be able to do. Scanlan likes to think that they have a mutual magical respect for one another. (He likes it so much that he doesn’t bring it up lest he be disappointed.) He’s met many who regard bardic magic as little more than a party trick, and has used that underestimation to his advantage, but Keyleth has never been among them.

So while it's unexpected for her to come to see him alone, it's not exactly weird. Scanlan mostly leaves his door at the very least cracked open these days, a concession both to his desire to be close to his people, and to his assumption that some of them might like to be able to keep an eye on him.

“Can I come in?” she asks from the doorway, hair wet as though she’s been trying to bathe her problems away.

He hops up from the sitting area where he’d been reading, looking for new, interesting spells to dazzle both friend and foe. “That depends, are you here to give me an inspirational speech?”

She laughs, mostly humorless. “I’ll promise not to if you let me hang out. I was kind of hoping you'd be doing the inspiring.”

He welcomes her in, shows her to the plush chair across from his, and summons servants for tea. He knows she was upset before - maybe she needs someone to talk to about it who isn't the three she's closest to, considering it involves them all.

Scanlan is good at making people feel better, when he’s not hell-bent on making things worse. “What's on your mind, Voice of the Tempest?”

She chews on it for a little while before saying anything. He lets her take her time, until finally she speaks. “I could really use a distraction and you're the only one I could stand the idea of being around right now.”

He gets it. Grog isn't a huge conversationalist, and Pike, healer that she is, has a habit of getting right to what hurts the most in an effort to fix it. It's a great tactic for a dislocated shoulder, but delicate situations call for deft fingers, not strong ones. In this situation, he’s the one who can provide the temporary relief she’s looking for, to draw her into a conversation about what kind of components she uses for spells he might want to learn, or to tell her a few funny tales from his days before Vox Machina when he was wild and free and even more stupid than he is now.

Still, he’s less stupid than he was when he walked away, _so_ convinced that he was nothing more than a singing monkey to them - a small, funny thing capable of a few good tricks that made it worth keeping around. Being less stupid, and liking himself a little more, means he understands what the stupider, hating-himself-more Scanlan wouldn't have - Keyleth isn't reaching for an object to perform for her at will and dismiss when it’s no longer needed, she is asking a friend to distract her to help her feel better.

The voiceless chorus in his head that used to tell him they only liked him for what he could do for them has gotten quieter and quieter, though. Every time one of his stupid jokes makes someone’s eyes brighten even while they roll them at him, every meal they humor his new diet through, it gets even softer. When he's singing to himself absently only to find someone has stumbled upon him and been silently listening for who knows how long, and he sees their contended expressions. Or when one of them shows him such trust and vulnerability. And so he gives her what she asked for.

 

He does his job and does it well - she's laughing at one of his tales, a hilarious romp during which he first learned the lesson to always, always keep at least some spell power in reserve. He has only slightly insinuated that said magical energy was expended in the course of an evening spent with an alluring halfling when her trademarked Keyleth curiosity gets the better of her.

“Do you… Do you use magic, during?” She makes a series of ridiculous faces to clarify what she means.

“Look, supplemental materials are always fun, but there's no substitute for a practical skill executed well.”

Keyleth’s not dumb, but she likes things to be laid out for her in plain terms. It probably has to do with the fact that her best friend is Percy, who speaks euphemistically enough that talking to him sometimes turns into more of an interpretive dance than a conversation. “What does that mean?”

“It means that with creative magic use I can get someone off from across the room, but sometimes I really like to do it the old-fashioned way.”

She looks at him for a long few seconds, and sets her teacup down. He has a split-second of worry that he's been overly vulgar or something and she's about to leave in a flurry of embarrassment. 

His sliver of a paranoid moment passes. Her cheeks are a little flushed, but she doesn't look flustered. She walks over to the bed and sits down onto it, facing him.

Leaving nothing unclear, she asks, “Does this count as across?”

It's a hell of an opportunity, the chance to show off some of what he's able to do to someone who has enormous power, and he _loves_ to show off. Scanlan's magic doesn't come from the trees or the dirt. His power to weave magic into his words and music comes from him, somewhere inside. It's beautiful, and more than anyone else in their weird little family, he thinks Keyleth will see the beauty. Her power is based in nature, yes, but it doesn't come from it in a direct way. She doesn't need to be in contact with it to use her magic; her connection to nature is something she carries within herself. If anyone can truly appreciate the ways he pulls magic out of himself, it's someone who does it too.

And there are the less esoteric reasons. Scanlan’s spectrum is broad, but even measured with a narrower scope, Keyleth is beautiful. The chance to see her come, to be the one making her do it, is certainly a draw.

He starts with a beat, drummed against the table with a few fingers. Maybe it even looks like he's trying to figure out what he's gonna do, or it's an absent gesture. He can see her start to move with it soon enough though, head nodding lightly, toe tapping. He lets the beat build upon itself, up and up.

Then he starts to sing.  
  
He doesn't use words, only vocalizes, envisioning the sounds as tendrils sliding up her ankles, through her scalp, around her waist. He sings out spectral fingers and caresses her palms, her wrists.

She lets out the lightest sigh.

He changes the pace, less ethereal and more frenetic, steadily increasing the tempo of his table-drumming. She can feel it - he sees her breathing get quicker as the notes he sings to her become less soft and seductive and more insistent.  
  
In his mind, through the gossamer film of his magic, he can feel her body, warm and shaking just a little. It's not like touching with his fingers, but he can sense the hills and plains of her in a way that feels wonderfully intimate. His magic can feel hers and he sends it dancing against the barrier of her skin as though to say _come out, come to me_.

“Scanlan,” she gasps, and his wordless notes start to become her name, sung, exalted. She lays back onto his bed as though she's being poured there, a full-body undulation.

On a last, long note that he holds and holds and holds, he envisions his magic as clearly as he can, no longer tendrils like seaweeds fluttering in low tide waters but instead as a fog clinging and pressing to every inch of her, completely enveloping her entire body in reverberating pleasure. 

Scanlan has always privately thought that Keyleth seems like the type to squeak when she comes, and he's quite vindicated to find that to be true. He's also terribly, obviously hard right now, but it would be unsporting to assume she's had enough.  
  
He sips his forgotten tea, soothing his throat in case of an encore. “Shall I go on?” he asks, as though he's reading the paper to her over breakfast and not singing her to a squelching orgasm.  
  
“Maybe one more?” she says, short of breath and grinning. A grasping vine snakes around his ankle and up his leg. “Then my turn?” she asks.  
  
The next words he sings are _fuck yes_.

 

 

 

Vex wasn't exactly lying when she said she loved him as himself, when he was in planetar form and she'd been giving him appreciative glances. She _does_ love him in his own skin, the truth rings clear through his ability to sense lies. He also hears her tone when she calls his temporary body hot, though, and files that information away like he does with any sexy details people drop. He never knows if or when it might be of some use to him, but what is a bard but a collector of interesting facts?

He doesn't actually have to hold it long because they're in yet another of those situations where they might all die soon and are behaving accordingly, and Vex gets tipsy and asks if he's ever used his polymorphing ability for sexual ends mere days later.

Scanlan, always down to clown, answers readily. “Part of the deal is if I maintain concentration on it for over an hour, I get stuck that way. So that means I can do it for a quick enough encounter, or with someone who isn't going to be surprised by a gnome appearing in the midst of things.”

“So, with someone you know,” she clarifies.

“Ideally, yes. It's something I learned fairly recently and I don't get around the way I used to.”

“Well, if you ever decide you want to give it a test-ride,” she says suggestively, and Scanlan has no idea if she's just teasing him or not.

She could be fucking around. She seems serious, though. “Vex…” he trails off because he isn't sure how to play it.

Her face goes red. “You know what, nevermind, I don't want to give you a complex or something, like make you think you aren't attractive already. I made it weird, I'm gonna go to bed now and you can tease me about it later.”

Vex flees. She gets ahead of him fueled by embarrassment and long legs, but he knows all the shortcuts in the mansion. He thinks, as he slips through shortcuts to head her off, about what she’d said to him before. _You’re always my favorite when you’re just yourself._ Of all of the abilities that body had given him - divine healing, comprehension of all languages, truesight - none had struck him in quite the same way as knowing, beyond any shadows of doubt, that she’d spoken the truth. Scanlan has spent the better part of a lifetime hating himself and finding it nigh impossible to believe that anyone else could feel differently, even when they said otherwise. But Vex had so casually, so easily said to him, _I love you like you were_ , and he had no recourse but to believe her because it was literally impossible for it to be a lie.

“You didn't give me a complex,” he tells her when he pops out of a tapestry in the hall before she makes it to her room. “You made me feel like part of the group again, like I'm your crazy friend you can bounce that kind of idea off of. Not having you all - it was my own doing, but I really missed things like that, being able to play around and do dumb stuff just because it might be fun. So, you know. We don't have to. But if you want, yeah, that would be fun.”

She leans down and kisses his forehead. By the time she's standing back up, he's growing taller, his skin seeming to freeze over as it goes blue. _Good night, my child_ , he says in that voice inside her mind.  
  
“None of that,” she scolds, but she follows him to his room, her hand wrapped into his divine bicep. “You can change the layout of the mansion with a thought, is that right?”

 _Super-high ceiling so we can test out the wings, right? Already did it._ He opens the door to show her.  
  
She laughs, overjoyed. “Your dirty mind and sense of adventure are exactly why I asked you instead of Keyleth,” she says.

 _I wouldn't sell Keyleth short,_ he tells her. _I think she'd surprise you._

He's big now, really big, so he lifts her up in his arms like she weighs nothing, and they fly up and up. They go high enough that her armor clatters noisily as they strip it off, piece by piece, and drop it to the floor. High enough that they plummet for seconds when she rakes her fingers through the feathers at the base of his wings and his whole body goes warm with it.

 

They don't stay up for too long; he finds that it's difficult to multitask flying with the other kinds of things he wants to do, and it turns out Vex is a hands and knees fuck-me-from-behind type of girl. Seeing her this way, face down and ass up, he can't help but wonder if her brother looks the same from this angle.

 

 

 

Vax, it turns out, does look a bit different. Partially because of the handprint scar on his back and his slimmer hips, but it could also have something to do with the fact that Scanlan isn’t looming over Vax from a nine-foot body.

He finds this out one evening in the mansion, when Vax appears in his room. Trust a rogue to figure out the intricate series of magical tunnels but never to mention them. It's late, but Vax is fidgety and talks fast.

“I’m not dead. But I’m kind of having a little trouble and I was hoping you’d be able to help. I heal fast, but my heart beats real slow. I’m still not sure what I can and can’t do. Things are all over the place and I don’t know if it’s all in my head or some stuff just… doesn’t work anymore. And if something strange happens, it’s really hard to weird you out, so I thought…”

Scanlan knows Vax has been on a whirlwind tour of I'll-be-dead-soon heart-to-hearts with everyone, but either his gutter brain has gotten the best of him yet again or this one is a little different. “Okay, so, are you trying to ask me to supervise while you rub one out, or did Keyleth tell you about my hands-free trick?”

Vax slows down significantly. “Um, well. I came to you because I've been having… trouble, and I thought maybe you could give me some pointers or encouragement, but it sounds like maybe you have a story that is about to give me the erection I have been unable to achieve with death's specter looming. So, uh… go on?”  
  
And the thing is, Vax is hot, even with that whole lanky, broody, favored-of-the-death-goddess thing he has going on. He's narrower in the hips than a full human, and so light on his feet that it seemed like he could glide long before he had wings to float on. Scanlan loves any excuse to tell a tale, and Scanlan is easy, especially for these people.  
  
So he invites Vax to get comfortable, and tells his story.

“I know you claim ignorance about magic even though it’s clear you have more and more of it at your disposal, but I understand that your relationship to magic is different because it is a gift given to you by your god. My magic doesn’t come from a god, and neither does Keyleth’s. I’ve always fancied us as having a bit of a connection there, and I was all too pleased to have dear Kiki express interest in my methods.”

“Your methods,” Vax says, amused. He’s removed his boots and unfastened some of his armor, sitting back against the plush pillows of Scanlan’s bed.

Scanlan would really prefer for him to lose the clothes completely, but he certainly does like the dance of it all. He leans sideways lazily against the pillows next to Vax, close but not crowded, running one of his hands through the ends of Vax’s long hair. Vax is vain about his hair, and his sister’s. Scanlan’s always liked that, the way Vax pretends he’s making sure his haughty, lovely sister never looks anything less than the devastating best she prefers when he’s actually soothing his anxious, flighty hands with meticulous plaits. 

“She asked me about whether I use it for bedroom purposes. I must say, I was rather flattered by the opportunity to show off a bit for a caster of her power.”

“I'll just bet,” Vax agrees, running his hands up and down his thighs. To calm or titillate himself, Scanlan is unsure.

“You and Pike get power from your gods. Keyleth’s comes from her connection with nature. Mine just comes from me, from pouring pieces of myself into my words and music. So I sang for her.”

“You sang to her.”

Vax sounds amused, which just won't do. Scanlan’s hand darts up higher, from the ends of Vax’s hair to the root at the base of his neck, and he tugs sharply but slow, the tip of Vax’s ear brushing his lips when he hisses into it. “Yes, I sang to her. You see that chair over there? I sat in it and sang while she writhed on my bed, listening to me and feeling my magic pour across her body. It was a sight to behold, Vax’ildan.”

So, too, is this. Vax is pulling back against Scanlan’s hand, yanking his own hair harder, making it hurt a little more, cock in hand.

Scanlan doesn’t require more of a response than that. “I was watching her chest heave and thinking, if I asked nice she would probably show me her tits, or pull up her skirt so I can see if she's ginger down there too. But the magic is in the song, so I'd have to stop to do it.”

Talking about his girlfriend this way is plainly doing it for Vax. Scanlan untangles his hand and traces it down the center of his chest, exposed with his armor undone. “Slower, Vax, don't rush. Always with the haste… savor it a little.”

Scanlan's magic is in words, too, of course, so he keeps talking.  
  
“When I sang to her, I could feel her. Not the way skin feels, though. In the place inside me where my magic is connected, _that's_ where I could feel her, how I could sense the topography of her in my mind. I've done all kinds of things, Vax, with all kinds of people. But sit ten feet from a powerful, beautiful, fully-clothed woman, and sing her off? I'd never done that.”  
  
“That's you, huh, collecting experiences?” Vax’s words are teasing, almost dismissive, but his tone is breathless.  
  
“Oh, yes. I'm collecting this one right now. The way you look, the way you react to me talking about her. She used her magic on me, too, you know.”  
  
“Tell me,” Vax groans, head thrown back.

“She covered my body in vines, kind of her version of what I'd done to her. It made it like a dance, where I showed her my moves and then she did them her way. I could feel her magical essence in the vines crawling across my skin, her power where they constricted me. They enveloped me all across my skin, touching and teasing.” He skates his hands around Vax’s chest, imitating.

“And then…  she did something I _didn’t_ do. She slid them inside me.”

The noise Vax makes at that, the way his hips roll - Scanlan is unlikely to ever forget the image. “Has she done that to you, Vax? Or was she doing what you’re doing now, practicing with me first?”

“Scanlan…” Vax says, and in his wide, expressive eyes, it’s hard to tell what he’s feeling other than _a lot_ and _all at once_.

“Oh, it’s no hardship for me, I can assure you of that. Would that help, something wriggling inside you? I’m good at that, you know. Small hands, very dextrous.”

It’s easier to tell where his feelings are taking him when he’s shoving off his disheveled clothes and getting into position. Scanlan, rarely in the company of anyone as slutty as himself, feels a warm sense of camaraderie (among other things).

It's camaraderie all around as he blesses his ancestors for the nimble, talented hands they passed down to him. He doesn't know if the rock gnomes of old have anything to do with his skill at multitasking, but in the moment, when he has one on his own cock and the other working its way into Vax, he feels more than generous enough to attribute that to them as well.

He wrings all sorts of gorgeous notes and noises out of Vax. He'd really like to draw it out, make it last agonizingly long, but time isn't something Vax has a whole lot of these days, hence his trouble getting it up. He deserves to come sooner rather than later.

One of Scanlan's array of talents his sense for what kind of thing is just dirty enough to get someone off. “You know,” he says conversationally, “you look a lot like your sister from this angle.”

It works. Vax’s muscles tighten all around Scanlan's hand and he makes a sound like a gurgle when he comes all over Scanlan's duvet and makes a big mess, just like his girlfriend did.

Vax apparently also knows how to get someone there. Panting and lovely, he looks back over his shoulder at Scanlan and tells him, “She _is_ ginger down there. You should ask to see next time.”

 

 

 

When the fight's over and Percy click-clacks his guns away, Scanlan feels something like a full-body flashback to druggedly throwing himself at him. Really, it’s not his fault that he got dosed _or_ that Percy’s gun-handling is terribly sexy, but he does still feel that the situation hasn’t been resolved.

What’s still gnawing at him is that the love potion may have made him act out, but it didn’t affect his perception, and to his perception, Percy had been flattered by his attention and words. He had also bristled somewhat at Vex’s suggestions that something was wrong, that Scanlan’s attentions couldn’t be genuine.

When their other friends have trickled away, he pulls Percy aside. “I know I said let’s forget it ever happened, but I just wanted to tell you… Everything I said was true at the time. The bits about you sweatily handling your gun are still true. I don't mind being embarrassed - I've embarrassed myself a lot in my time and will surely live to do so again. But you are my dear friend, and I would hate to think that I embarrassed you with my behavior. The potion made me brazen.”

Percy seems mollified, and there's that flicker of a look again. “No harm done. All told, I'm actually pretty partial to brazen.”

It’s the same way Scanlan remembers Percy looking before, flattered with an edge of interest. If Vex hadn't (rightly) assumed something was amiss and (wrongly) figured it to be Scanlan fucking with them… he would have succeeded. Nobody who has ever given Scanlan that measured, weighing look has ever declined his invitation.

The words fall out before he even has time to think. “Then you should let me suck your cock now that I’m not under the influence of mind-altering magic.”

Tellingly, Percy does not immediately decline. “How do I know you haven't been dosed again?”  
  
“Because if you say no, I'll leave you alone this time.” He nods his goodbye and does just that.

 

 

Percy comes to him the next night, and Scanlan sucks his dick like it owes him gold. There is no preamble or hesitation; when Percy walks in and shuts the door behind him, Scanlan simply shoves him toward the bed and climbs on top when Percy settles down onto it. He thinks about how desperate he was to get Percy in him, under the potion’s cloud, and he thinks about how he hadn't needed any potion in him at all to see Percy hard at work on the platinum trammels and look at him with admiration and attraction.

Percy's fun to talk to because he always has a quip or some sharp words, but he's even more fun to strike dumb. Percy's got a smart mouth, but Scanlan's mouth is a motherfucking _genius_. When he hums, it's not just vibration, it's magic, formless but so powerful. Percy actually yelps, which is terribly endearing.

It's the work of mere minutes to make Percy come, and when he does, Scanlan swallows some but leaves his mouth open to let the rest spill across and down his face. 

“You don't have to stay for this part if you don't want to,” he tells Percy, licking his palm and unfastening his trousers.

Percy's light irises are completely invisible, swallowed into the black of his pupils. His gaze keeps flickering from Scanlan's eyes to his chin, where Percy's come is still trickling down in rivulets to the V where his shirt is open at the neck. “I'll certainly leave if you'd prefer, but I'd really like to stay for this part.”

“Yeah? You want to watch me get myself off on what I just did to you? I could have swallowed all of this, you know. I just like it better when it gets all over me.”

“Ideally I'd be helping you, but again, as you prefer.” Percy is good at talking again now that he's not getting his lungs sucked out through his dick. Minding his manners but still wanting more.

One of the things Scanlan loves best is to give someone what they want. “What I’d prefer is to find out what those calluses on your fingers feel like inside me.”

Percy smiles his smug rich boy smile and swipes at the come that's dripped down Scanlan's chest, wetting his fingers on his own warm spend. “You said you like it all over, right?”

Scanlan shudders in delight, and nods. 

“Then turn around.”

He does as he's told.

 

 

 

Pike is a bit of an unknown quantity these days.

She's forgiven him, yes, because it is in her nature, but their interactions remain somewhat stilted. They talk a bit at meals, and work together in battle, but she's the last person he expects to pay him a call in his room while he's absently plucking at a lyre and trying to wind down from the day enough to get some sleep.

Even less than that does he expect for her to use the secret passage that connects her room to his, or what she's come to talk to him about.

“How many of our friends have you fucked in this bed?” she asks, and her tone isn't accusatory, exactly.

“Well,” he says, fumbling both with his lyre and for words. “I guess it depends on what you count as fucking?”

“Who, other than you, has had an orgasm in this room?” she clarifies. With technicalities deftly averted, he’s not sure how to respond to that.

“Everyone, then,” she says. “Everyone but me.”

Well, everyone but her and Grog. He and Grog had been in that baths, but that doesn't seem like the kind of hair to split right now.

He feels… he feels a lot. “I wasn't scheming, Pike, I swear. It just happened.”

She sits on the end of his bed. She's the only one whose legs dangle comfortably from it, whose knees aren't up to her chest from the scale of how close to the ground it is. “Come take my boots off for me. Tell me who you had first.” Her tone is conversational, as though this is all perfectly normal.

His head is spinning. He gets to his knees, obedient. “You know, to my mind, they had me. Well, most of them.”

“Tell me how Percy had you,” she instructs. Telling, that that's where she goes first.

“I sucked him off,” he says, edging on prideful as he undoes her boots’ laces. “I'm really good at it. I thought that was that, maybe I could get him to stuff a couple of fingers in me and I'd be able to get off before he left. And he did, and I was going to, but then he asked real nice if he could fuck me, those clipped tones and posh manners of his. Like, _oh, if it wouldn't put you out terribly I'd just love to put it in you, but no worries if not, do come by for tea later_. I liked that about Percy, how he's willing to ask for what he wants, and he's willing to hear no.”

“You didn't tell him no, though, did you?” She sounds almost amused.

“Hell, no,” he says, laughing. He tugs her boots off and goes for the socks next. “Do you remember how he looked in that volcano, smelting platinum? I wanted to see him like that again, sweaty and dirty and satisfied.”

“And was he?”

“Oh, we both were. You know what I like best about fucking men bigger than me, other than the obvious?” He rubs her feet, slow and firm, trying his best to assume that this is just a conversation and nothing more.

She looks into his eyes and it’s almost uncomfortably penetrative. Almost, because a secret that Scanlan is still figuring out about himself is how much he loves people getting inside him in more than just the standard way. “How much they come,” she guesses. “The volume of it.”

A shiver runs through him. Does she just know him well enough to guess, or does she like that, too? Either way, it feels deliciously intimate, and he can’t help but think about Pike there, in his place, riding a big human dick and loving it.

“You’re getting distracted,” she chides.

“Sorry, Pike,” he says, voice small. He unclenches his hands, pressure control forgotten in his reverie.

“Go on,” she grants, and he’s not sure if she means talking or rubbing out the tightness in the arch of her foot, so he clears his throat, breaks the eye contact, and goes with both.

“I could tell he was more into the size difference than he expected - it surprised me, too. But you know how they are. Hands on your hips cause they want to see if they can circle them completely. They get you on top to feel how light you are. They like to watch their cocks disappear into you.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yes, very much. It was fun to render him speechless before, but I have to admit I liked it better when he was talking to me. Do you know what he said? He told me, ‘I want to fuck you as well as you fucked my wife.’” He mimes fanning his face. “Whoo!”

From her expression, it looks like Pike agrees. “So, how did you fuck his wife?”

“Good, apparently,” he says with a toothy grin. She shoves at him with the foot he isn’t working on. “Okay, okay. Vex wanted to do some playful exploring after witnessing an ability of mine that she found of interest.”

“You're being coy.”

  
“She wanted to see what the planetar body could do.”

“And what could it do?”

“Fly, for one. And the wings were surprisingly sensitive. I think what Vex was really there for was the huge angelic cock, though.”

“And so you gave it to her.”

“With great delight, I gave it to her.”

“Just like her husband gave it to you?”

He laughs. “Very much like that, yes.”  
  
“And her brother?”

“Wanted to make sure he wasn't all the way dead yet, if you know what I mean.”

“And how exactly did you help him with that?”

“By telling him about what I had done with Keyleth.”

“And what's that?”

“A little magical cultural exchange between casters who don't get their power from gods.”

“So, what, you fucked her with Bigby's Hand or something?”

He laughs - both her assumption and creativity are absolutely charming. “No, I manipulated raw magical energy in such a fashion as to bring her to orgasm via song.”

Pike nods appreciatively. “You said it was an exchange, though.”

“It was. She used her vines on me. We didn’t take off our clothes or touch each other’s skin, just sat across from one another.”

“That sounds lovely, Scanlan.” She's not being sarcastic - she looks almost touched by that, the sides of her eyes crinkling warmly. 

“It was. Vax still isn’t used to magic the way we are, he doesn’t feel it the way we do, so I’m not sure if he understood the full depth of what I was describing to him, but he enjoyed it nonetheless. She fucked me with her vines, though. Vax was really into hearing that. I got my whole hand in him while I told him about it.”

This touches her, too, but in an entirely different way; it seems to Scanlan that Pike very much would have liked to have seen that.

“And what about Grog?” she asks, after a moment.

“Well… a long time ago, Grog and I were out carousing, as we once did. The establishment we went to was busy - no one available to suit his preferences. We had a bit of a heart-to-heart that night as we got further into our cups, about being outnumbered by humans and half-elves, what it's like to live in a world where we're constantly reminded of our size relative to everyone else. How sometimes it's nice to take someone to bed who just fits.”

Pike nods, solemn in understanding but still curious.

“So I made him a promise that night, that if I ever managed to learn to polymorph into people and not just animals, and if he couldn’t find a lady who fits, he could just let me know.”

“So Vex wasn’t the only one who got ideas when you turned into the planetar.”

“She wasn’t. I guess seeing that reminded him of the old promise. He was a little reticent about it, asked if I remembered that night. We’re still a little shaky, after everything, so I didn’t play dumb. And I wanted things to be okay with us. So I told him that if he was interested, I had an idea he might enjoy.”

“And what was that idea?”

He hesitates. “Nothing awful, I promise. It’s just… Grog asked me not to tell anyone.”

“That’s fair,” she agrees. “So you took another form for him to fuck you.”

“I did,” he says after a moment of deliberating how much he can say to honor the spirit of the request but also give Pike satisfactory answers. He’s not inclined to shut down the conversation entirely; his sliver of hope remains.

“A bigger form,” she clarifies.

“Yes,” he confirms, cause that narrows it down pretty much not at all.

“A goliath?”

“No.”

She looks around the room. “Here?”

Scanlan shakes his head, feeling her getting closer.

She narrows her eyes and thinks about it for a while. “The baths, then.”

She’s good, but then again, she knows Grog very well, too. He nods.

“So you wouldn’t flood your room.”

He nods again. That, and because he hadn’t been sure whether water nymphs _needed_ to be surrounded by water at all times, or just preferred it.

“Did you fuck him so he'd forgive you?”

“I fucked him cause he asked, and because I promised, and so he'd forgive me.”

It’s hard to read her expression. “So is that why I'm the odd one out? I didn't ask?”

He’s long stopped massaging her feet, but he still has his hands cupped around them. “I gave everyone else what they want. I still don't know what you want, and I'm still afraid that it's for me to leave.”

She sighs. “I don’t want you to leave, Scanlan. I have to admit, I feel a little left out. I’m not sure it’s a great idea, given our past, but we could die again, and stay dead this time. And it would suck to have regrets.”

Scanlan truly, honestly does not know what to do with this, because while he has always kept that sliver of hope about Pike, it’s never seemed like the sort of thing that’s actually likely to happen at all because he is absolutely beneath her in every way except the one he wishes to be.

“Scanlan, what's in the past is in the past and I have accepted your apology for it, so what I can't stop thinking is, it would probably be really good. You'd take anything I gave you, and what's more, you'd be into it. If I wanted to slap you in the face and spit in your mouth, you'd ask me nicely for it and thank me for the pleasure. And you'd _mean_ it.”

Scanlan has managed not to get too worked up by the stories he's been telling so far. He's not invulnerable, for fuck’s sake; he's been watching Pike get slowly more pink about the cheeks and squirm restlessly when something seems to particularly appeal to her. But there is obviously a large and perverse part of him that would love nothing more than to be thoroughly degraded by the walking personification of goodness and light in this cursed world.

“I would mean it,” he says plainly. “I would love it.”

“Do you love me?” she asks.

“Always.”

“Take your shirt off.” He sets her feet softly down on his lap and does as he's told.

“So, don't take this the wrong way...” she says, and casts Greater Restoration on him.

He laughs. “None taken.”

She takes his face in her hands forcefully, looks into his eyes. “Next time, okay? Next time, I'll slap you and call you a slut. I'll make you cry. We'll have a great time.”

He's afraid to ask, because it seems too good to be true. But he does anyway. “And this time?”

Her grip softens, thumbs following his sideburns. “This time, I'm going to make love to you.”

Something in his chest comes undone. He feels untethered, like walking into the perimeter of a Reverse Gravity spell. Like something has been pulled from under him. She kisses him, and he is forever grateful that he gets to do this now, when he thinks of her as an actual person, and never had a chance to back when he was still trying to catch her like a collectible.

 

 

 

Pike stays the night, sleeps in his bed without asking for permission to, which thrills him. Pike taking liberties is everything he wants so desperately; if Pike is in charge, nothing between them can go wrong.

She takes quite a few more in the morning. He wakes up to her knees on either side of his head, looming beautifully with messy hair.

“It's next time,” she says. “Now get to work.”

He does, joyously.

 


End file.
